Exporting Alternate Shapes

The 'Add alternate shapes' option allows you to create alternate shape sets for hierarchical models. A shape set consists of a list of differences that should be applied to the original hierarchy when drawing a module using the set. The differences are a list of shape replacements that should be made (such as replacing one hat with another). There is a related concept, the shape set collection, that can be set up in hierarchy mode in Inteng. A shape set collection consists of a list of shape sets that should be applied at the same time, when using that collection. For example you might have one shape set that provided an alternate head, and another that provided an alternate set of arms. You could then create a shape set collection that would use both these shape sets, resulting in both the arms and the head being replaced.

To use this option you will need to create a Max scene containing the alternate shapes, using the original shape names. For example if you are creating an alternate shape for 'head', then the new shape should be called 'head' as well. When you do the export, the shapes in the scene will be compared with the shapes already in the rif file with the same name. Any shape that is different will be exported under a changed name (something like 'head~1'), and will be added to the list of differences for this shape set. Currently the export plugin only checks for mesh differences (not texturing differences), so if you want to create alternate texturing of a shape you will need to use the texture mapping mode in Inteng. 

You can replace a shape with a dummy object of the same name, which will cause the shape to disappear when using that shape set. You can also replace a dummy object with a shape of the same name. (You can't replace one dummy object with another however).
Note that when doing the export you don't have to have all of the shapes from the rif file in the scene. You could create a scene just consisting of the changed shapes, if you preferred.